Internet giant Google has said it will abandon its Google Wave project, developed in Australia, which was once the centre of a conversation about how collaborative email would change the way users communicate on the internet.
In a blog post, Google said the company hasn’t been impressed by the slow take-up rate and the platform won’t be continued as a standalone product.
“Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects.”
Google Australia employee Lars Rasmussen developed the Wave, but told The Age recently the platform has had its share of problems.
“We had a lot of interest after we first showed a demo and then when we got it out into peoples’ hands there was a fair bit of disappointment because it didn’t change the world overnight.”
“It was very immature – buggy, crashy and slow. But primarily it was new and people didn’t quite know what to do with it.”
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
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